Posted on 09/29/2012 4:43:22 PM PDT by Kolath
Longtreet was right.
I do hope the good general was joking. The successful defenses of fortifications are FAR too numerous to list.
To give just one example, over a thousand years Constantinople was beseiged dozens, possibly 100, times. It was taken only twice.
Same as an infantry regiment. About 1000 men. After their initial muster, very few regiments were ever again at full strength.
The mostly rural soldiers were all exposed in camp to new diseases and often the regiments lost 25% or more before seeing combat. Add in combat losses, and many regiments seldom had more than 500 men.
Replacement soldiers were seldom brought into an existing regiment because governors preferred to raise a new regiment, which allowed them to hand out dozens of patronage jobs to officers.
It’s interesting that nobody has mentioned Grierson, who led the most daring cavalry raid of the war, all the way across Mississippi.
Another fascinating figure was Grimes Davis, the Mississippi born Union soldier who led his troopers out of Harpers Ferry before Stonewall could scoop them up. But he was killed at Brandy Station.
In the modern era I would agree. Certainly tactical nukes and even the bunker busters will take out any conceivable fortification.
But cities can be considered a type of fortification, and are certainly much easier to defend than open ground.
And during the period from WBTS to WWII, fortifications were ubiquitous, because technology made one soldier in a trench the equal of 2 or 3 (more during early years of WWI) assaulting it. Later tech of course eliminated some of this advantage.
IOW, while fortifications cannot likely be held forever, they can certanly make it a lot easier to bleed the enemy.
After the war, Grierson organized and commanded the 10th Cavalry Regiment, the Buffalo Soldiers, from 1866-88. His fair treatment of his black troopers and his respect and honesty with the Native American tribes made him a number of enemies among his fellow officers (especially his superior, Phil Sheridan) but garnered him the devotion of his troopers and the admiration and respect of the Indian chiefs and elders.
Certainly one of the most successful defenses of a fixed position was by the British at Rourke’s Drift in South Africa in 1879.There is some merit in compelling your enemy to come to you into a killing zone. And then there’s the nightmare of it too. Fort Douamont at Verdun was truly horrifying for it’s French defenders. Their air supply was quickly cut off from shelling and the men literally began to suffocate, their observation posts were knocked out, essentially blinding them and finally a large caliber German shell found the ammunition magazine and bought the roof down on the men, entombing them. Rommel had right when he said “Movement brings victory’’.
They were lucky the Engineering Officer was there the LT from the Borders was stone deaf.
Maxims and Enfields, the Lewis came later. Plus they entrenched.
The attack with the point was promoted by Nappy, it was a frog invention.
One of my ancestors Regiment suffered 247 deaths from sickness and 137 from battle 1861-1863.
Thanks for the replies. Most informative.
A unit of Yankee infantry was about half of what a Confederate unit was in size. A Yankee Brigade was about 1500 men, three 500 men regiments. The Yankees had more officers to go around than the Confederate Army. A full sized Confederate Brigade( a rare thing) was 3000 men; three full sized infantry regiments of 1000 each. Not sure if cavalry was the same.
Not according to this site.
http://www.angelfire.com/wv/wasec5/formations.html
Each Union or CSA infantry regiment was made up of 10 companies, each (theoretically) of 100 soldiers.
There was some difference in cavalry regiments, apparently. A Union regiment had 12 troops of 100 men each, while a CSA regiment had 10 troops.
Throughout the war, and on both sides, there were also units that varied from this ideal, even in theory. In practice, as stated, regiments very often were 50% to 80% under-strength at any given time. I believe CSA was more likely to assign new recruits to an existing regiment than was the Union, making their regiments larger, as you say, on average.
Here’s another link. It claims Union heavy artillery/infantry regiments also had 12 companies.
http://www.civilwarhome.com/armyorganization.htm
According to this site, while Union and CSA regiments tended to be about the same size (always in theory), formations above the regiment level tended to be larger in the CSA, presumably because CSA brigades and divisions had more regiments in each.
http://www.civil-war-journeys.org/military_terms.htm
As you can see, there’s more than a little difference of opinion out there on the subject.
In the famous charge of the 1st Minnesota at Gettysburg on July 2, there were 262 men in the regiment, with two companies on detached service.
215 of them were killed or wounded in just a few minutes.
I’s a toss up between JEB and Forrest for the south.
The Union officers were kind of like shooting stars, notable for only certain periods of time: Buford at Gettysburg, Stoneman for his raids at the end, and Grierson in LA, TN and MS.
This is a thread about cavalry which this discussion about infantry is probably not exactly applicable, as some cavalry were partisan fighters which who knows how many were in each "unit".
That's 82.1%, a horrendous casualty rate. There was a Texas regiment or brigade (I've seen it listed both ways) that suffered an 82.3% casualty rate at Antietam/Sharpsburg.
Yup. Despite their incredible losses, the 1st Minnesota, or what was left of it, also played a significant role the next day in the repulse of Pickett’s charge.
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